The Coal Life: Poems

Mantrip

Mantrip Before dawn, waiting for the mantrip creaking up the railed tongue of Mary Lee to return them underground, old-timers, Hungarian Slavs, brothers, blasters, nap on a bench, stubby arms folded across their chests, legs out straight, propped on dinner buckets—tiered urns filled with weak coffee and goulash— in their laps dynamite boxes and tamping sticks whittled out of birch, snap-brims pulled down over their eyes, heads cocked to the east away from the yawning mouth of the mine, as if Mary Lee had whispered a sacred lie into the ear of the first, putting him at ease, who whispered it in turn to the next and the next and the next until the last coughed up the secret, rising like a cloud of dust into the chilled night: The day is in flower. 63 ...